Bride of Morgoth
by EvilReceptionistOfDoom
Summary: Multiple deaths, time travel, Sauron, various badtempered Nazgul, jet airplanes, balrogs, talking heads, ruined cities, a man named Marshall, dirt, and your mom. No, I was kidding about that last one. Please read and review! or I will cry!
1. How It All Began

What happened was my own fault - I admit that now. But I also maintain there was an element of fate in it as well.

But what of it? What happened, happened.

I had been used to go on long journeys in my youth, wandering Greenwood the Great with none but myself and the beauty around me. I would be gone for days or weeks or months at a time, and it was on one such expedition that I had the misfortune of falling asleep.

It was an amazingly beautiful day, warm and bright, and I felt wonderful. I had been out for three weeks or so, heading south, and this area of the woods was relatively unfamiliar to me. I stopped by the side of a pleasant babbling brook to rest; its waters flashed in the sun and there was a nice grassy patch on the bank, where I reclined and idly tossed stones in the stream. Eventually I simply leaned back, eyes closed, soaking in the warmth of the sunlight, and without really realising what was happening, dozed off.

I woke suddenly to guttural voices and the sound of someone rifling through my pack. I leapt to my feet, snatching up my bow and nocking an arrow in one motion, but quick as I was, it wasn't quick enough. No sooner had I risen than there came a spray of startled grunts, a massive fist collided with my temple, and I saw no more.

The second time I wakened slow and painfully, my whole head throbbing. It was dark but for a small fire; its weak flame illuminated a small clearing among tangled, ivy-choked tree trunks, beyond which could be seen nothing but black. Eyes glowed from the darkness while enormous grey moths fluttered about, attracted by the light. I was bewildered - could this be my forest? Surely I had slept longer than it seemed, and I had been somehow transported to a distant land. But in my heart I knew it was not so.

A large, ugly orc squatted before the fire warming his hands; two more sat across from him, a fourth paced along the clearing's perimeter, and yet two more sat further back from the fire, inspecting my confiscated weaponry. So I had been captured by a patrol! But what had they been doing so far north?

I leaned against a tree, hands bound. I usually kept a small knife in one boot, if only because the boot had a secret pocket expressly for that purpose, and I could use that to cut my bonds. But I would wait til they slept - then I would have the benefit of stealth and hopefully would not have to risk a fight, and also I could get my swords back. Father would be furious (as would I be) if I were to lose them, as they were from Gondolin in the First Age, and very precious.

But the orcs did not sleep, and soon we were headed deeper into the dank, sickly forest. Surely this was not my beloved Greenwood. I was convinced we had passed into some strange place I did not know.

We went quickly through the unfriendly terrain while the sun rose, crept across the sky, and finally set in a blaze of red glory. Little light came through the twisted trees, but just as dusk was upon us we came to a break in the wood, a slight clearing before a steep, cliff-like hill. Sillouhetted against the fiery sky like a stain upon the horizon was a great black fortress rising from the murky wood. I felt a sudden sickening chill, an involuntary shudder at the sight. That was where we were going, I knew. But then we had plunged back into the dark forest, and the awful thing was lost from view.

This night, to my great disappointment, the orcs did not stop or make camp. They only set sticks afire for use as torches and continued to walk.

We arrived at dawn. Naught could be seen save a huge black door, large enough for a troll or dragon, for the forest grew thick even to the tower's very walls, blocking out sun and air. We halted before the door and the leader of the orc troop shouted in Westron speech, "Open the gate!" Protesting loudly, the doors ground open just wide enough to allow us passage, then grated shut after we were inside. I felt my heart sink. We moved through a maze of dark halls; orc-speech, laughter and distant screams occasionally echoed about.

Finally we came to another black door, still big enough for a troll though not as big as the first door. The head orc banged his hand three times against it, then stood back. These doors swung open silently. The orcs led me in.

It was a great black hall with an enormous throne at the opposite end, and in the throne sat a shrouded figure. I was compelled towards him, yet dreaded to move nearer. The head orc pulled me forward, impatient with my hesitant walk. "Brung you a gift, marstah," he said when we were but eight feet from the throne.

The cloaked figure looked up. "Must you bother me with prisoners, Grafshnert?" he began, but then stopped, red eye upon me. He stood and came toward me, an expression of disbelief on his face.

My own expression was one of horror. He was a skeleton with grey, motheaten flesh hanging from his bones; where his eyes should have been were instead a gaping hole on one side and on the other a huge. lidless, red orb with a slit pupil that gave the impression of a malificent fire. I was speechless with terror.

The Dark Lord Sauron placed a cold, skeletal hand against my cheek. "Can it be true?" he whispered. "My lady? Is it truly you?" It was all I could do to keep from screaming. Yet my lack of response seemed answer enough for him. He turned to Grafshnert. "Return this woman's belongings. And give her the tower room - it is the one most fit for a lady."

The orc stared in shock for a moment, then hurried off. Moments later my hands had been freed, and I was on my way up a long stair with Fire and Ice in their rightful spots at my sides.

Alone in the comfortably furnished tower room, I was so stunned and bewildered I could do nothing but stand, still and confused, in the center of the room for a long long time. Then I went shakily to the bed and sat down. Sauron lived! And what's more, he thought I was someone he knew! What would happen to me, I shuddered to think, when he realised he had made a mistake?


	2. Enter the Witchking

I remained quartered at Dol Guldur for several decades. It was not an uncomfortable imprisonment - quite the contrary, I was well taken care of and waited on by the orcs - but the whole affair was absolutely nerve-wracking. Every time Sauron summoned me to him I was so terrified I could scarce speak, certain he would realise his error at any moment and have me torn limb from limb or burned alive or fed to his wargs; but he never wished anything more than friendly conversation, which disturbed me all the more. As the years passed I developed a chronic shudder, twitching and trembling almost constantly, a circumstance symptomatic of my unending unease. Eventually I ceased to notice it, though the condition persisted until I could hardly recall a time when I _didn't _continually shake. It became, like so many things, a fact of life.

During this time I also became fluent in Black-speech, the language of Mordor, which the orcs spoke among themselves in coarser form. Though a despicable bunch, the orcs and goblins of the fortress were my only companions - save the Dark Lord himself - and infinitely more agreeable to fraternise with than he. I learned more about orc culture (insofar as it exists) than one could ever wish to know, and then some - but the assimilation I underwent then proved invaluable later on. And it was fascinating, in a morbid, repulsive sort of way. Besides, I had nothing better to do than wander the labrynthine halls of the Dol Guldur, conversing with the orcs and prisoners and praying Ulmo I might escape that horrid place alive.

I went each evening to Sauron's chambers, where I dined and he discussed with me whatever struck his fancy. Those were interesting suppers indeed. "Vaj," he would say, "the world has come to naught. Would that our lord had not fallen into the Valar's clutches! Ah, what an Arda we would see arise then! And I tell you, my lady, that day will come, when the darkness and the glorious flames overtake the lands once more and I rule as Morgoth would have had me do. And you, Vaj, you shall be at my right hand as his chosen ought to be!" Then he would sigh wistfully - his voice was awful, and his sigh like a death-rattle - and gaze off into the cobwebbed gloom beyond the candlelight as though his great eye looked beyond the shadows to the future he envisioned of a Middle Earth overrun. I would shudder spastically, as was my wont in those days, and presently he would stand and thank me for another delightful meal, and I would return to my tower room, relieved to have made it through my repast alive yet again. So it went. Likely things would have continued in this way for centuries into eternity but for some reminder - to this day I do not know what - that struck Sauron in the middle of the night and brought him in all his wrathful splendour to my quarters at two in the morning, breaking me from my slumber and nearly inducing a heart attack.

"YOU!" he roared, blazing fiery in the doorway, drawn to his full height and with the force of his horrific eye flaming upon me. I shrieked in surprise and fear and would have cowered under the bedcovers had I not been paralysed by terror. "Now I remember!" Sauron continued, bellowing like a torrential thunderstorm and seeming to grow taller by the second, "now I recall how it ended! My memory was clouded, but now I have been freed of your spell, vile sorceress! Now I remember your deceit! YOU BETRAYED US, O WORTHLESS WITCH, AND NOW SHALL YOU BE METED YOUR JUSTICE!"

I fainted. My heart had been beating too quickly to maintain its lagomorphic rhythm more that these few seconds, and the shock as it faltered proved too much for my fragile system. Never had I been so afraid in my life. I couldn't handle it. Then again, that weakness was likely what saved me, for during my unconsciousness the Dark Lord failed to kill me, though his demeanour had implied this was his intent.

When I awoke some time later I lay as I had fallen, still in bed, and the room was dark. Imagining the incident to have been a nightmare, I stood shakily and cautiously crossed to the door. It was locked. An exploration of my chambers revealed no other change; my only punishment so far, it seemed, was the curtailment of my accustomed freedom of movement. I could live with that. Or so I thought.

As days dragged on to weeks and thence to months, and still I remained imprisoned in my room, I began to wonder if I had not been deliberately forgotten. I imagined I might starve to death, but as time progressed and I did not move beyond simple hunger, I realised that was not so. I did, however, grow incredibly bored. The situation was not one of great interest, nor characterised by any variety whatsoever. Just when I had begun to think I might go mad with the monotony of it all, the door burst open and a pair of orcs dragged me roughly down the steps to the main hall, where Sauron was waiting for me.

"I cannot kill you for fear of my lord's revenge," he announced. "Therefore I have decided to send you where you may cause me the least trouble. This will be your escort." And he motioned with a sweep of one cadavrous limb to a creature I had in my fear neglected to note lurking by the far wall. It was a man-shaped being, shrouded in black, crowned in gleaming silver, terrible to look upon (though after being the Dark Lord's repeated guest these past years my spirit had hardened somewhat to the jarring sights of this world). Beside it a black, spine-winged dragon with a serpentine neck and a fleshy beard pawed the ground, restless for flight.

"The Witch-King of Angmar," said Sauron. "You fly with him tonight for Mordor."


	3. Flight

Mordor! I felt my blood run cold. Of course, I reflected, after living for years with Sauron at this his 'vacation-home', how much worse could it be to live in his palace with his lieutenant? _Much worse_, I decided.

The Witch-King motioned towards the dragon and hissed, "Get on." I only shook my head, too frightened to approach the beast lest it considered me a prospective meal and chose suddenly to act upon that consideration. The Witch-King grew impatient. Without warning he strode forward (he needed few steps to reach me), took me under the arms and lifted me onto the animal's back. I gasped in surprise; only after his armoured hands had left me did I register the chill horror of his touch.

He went down on one knee and bowed low before Sauron, saying in a low sibilant tone heavy with respect and reverence, "Your servant shall do as you have commanded, my lord," and with a deferential nod stood and leapt deftly onto the dragon behind me.

"All speed to you, my faithful thain," the Dark Lord replied. His eye moved to me, but he said nothing more, only signalled the Witch-King with one hand that he had leave to fly. Which he did, almost at once. There was a gut-wrenching feeling of upwards acceleration, as in an earthquake or a boat during a storm, and we were airborne. The ground plunged away beneath us, then raced up again as the dragon swooped from the high-ceilinged space to the grinding doors and slipped out with its wings drawn back against its body, less than an inch clearance on either side and below. I screamed and threw my arms about the thing's neck in terror, for the moment preferring that it eat me rather than I plummet to the ground, which had now grown so distant we may as well have been atop a mountain. I heard the Witch-King chuckle softly under the rush of air past us. Dol Goldur vanished beneath drifting patches of cloud.

The air up here was thin and difficult to breathe. My ears whined, aching, and popped and crackled every time I moved my jaw. And yet, once the fear wore off, the exhilaration of where I was, what I was doing, the miraculous speed at which we moved, began to expand in my chest in a strange tingling thrill. From there it spread outward; on my face it became a smile, and somehow it managed to delude my arms into thinking it safe to disengage the dragon's slender neck. I sat up straight, gazing awed and enraptured at the miniature-scale world far, far below, at the clouds surreal and unfathomably beautiful in the afternoon light, at the jagged summits of the White Mountains rising out of the fibrous mist as the sun - so brilliant here in the pure pale crystalline atmosphere - sank towards the horizon.

And then quite suddenly our mount dipped below the clouds and there before us was a city. It was enormous, all of white marble, dominated by a great tower at its top (for it was built on the margin of some stony peak), surrounded by concentric walls like the layers of an onion. I recognised it at once, though only from the tales of others as I had never been there myself. Minas Anor they had called it, Tower of the Sun - how was I to know that during my stay with the so-called Necromancer this fortress was become Minas Tirith, the Vigilant? Indeed, much more had changed in my absence than I would ever learn. But now as we swept low over the twilit streets and homes there were screams from below, and people that appeared small as ants rushed for cover, shielding their faces and ears and crying, "Naz-gul! Naz-gul!" One or two shot arrows at us. I thought to throw myself from the dragon's back to the city below in hopes I might survive the fall and be rescued, but before I could act on this determination we had sped away across a great plain towards wooded highlands and the dark mountains of the distance, crowned by fire and billowing smoke... _Mordor.._. Again goose-pimples leapt to my skin; the euphoria of flight vanished as a flame in a frigid downpour. We had almost reached it. I cringed against the Witch-King's steed as though the animal's glistening scales might provide some comfort, or my drawing back might somehow cause the Black Land to draw back as well, and so retreat from my path. Alas, no such miracle was to be my portion. We passed over another Mannish city - this would be Osgiliath, then, though it seemed strangely deserted in the cool burgeoning eve, lonely amongst lonely hills - and moved into the shadow.

But something was wrong. I had seen enough maps and charts and heard enough travellers' accounts to know a third fortress held Mordor back from Gondor: the Tower of the Moon, Minas Ithil. And yet we had moved into the darkness with no sign of it. Could it be Sauron's influence had spread so far as he often said? Clearly his outpost in my own Greenwood showed an enormous increase in his power, but an expansion of the borders of Mordor itself? I could hardly bear the thought, and what it might mean for the future.

We had been swiftly losing altitude since Osgiliath, and I had noticed some minutes after falling under the shadow that we followed a paved road which curved serpentine about the feet of the cliffs and spires of Mordor's border. I had thought it odd that Orcs should build such a road, but as it turned out, they had not - the thoroughfare was constructed by men, as was the towering fortress which burst suddenly into view as we rounded one of the countless craggy outcrops jutting out over our path like claws. It was spectacular, rising into the haze like an enchanted mountain, gleaming eerily, unnaturally green in the smoky night. And unmistakably of Mannish architecture. My heart fell; my suspicions had been confirmed beyond all doubt. Minas Ithil had fallen, and this deathly monsters' lair was the perversion that remained.

"Welcome to Minas Morgul," rasped the Witch-King as we landed gently atop the fortress' highest turret. "You may roam as you wish, but do not consider escape. I do not have enough time to waste it disciplining you."


	4. Interlude

The Witch-King's attitude towards his duties where I was concerned was one of resignation and resentment, much like the bored annoyance of a young adult assigned to watch over a group of naughty children. He allowed me, as he had said, to go wherever I pleased within Minas Morgul, but made it clear I was not to interfere in any of his affairs, and the one time I left the fortress and started idly down that main road, just to see what would happen, one of his eight Naz-gul aides came streaking down out of the sky and landed with a thud and a heavy draft from flapping wings before me, blocking the way. I jumped backwards with a surprised shout; the skies had been empty when I left, and the Tower of Sorcery quiet. "Go back," the black-shrouded figure hissed menacingly. I nodded and promptly obeyed, and thus ended my attempts at escape, at least for a little while.

I had good reason to wish to leave, however. Minas Morgul was a horrid place: cheerless, tomblike, utterly silent, melancholy and menacing. The heavens above were constantly in a state of stormy unrest, the thick murky clouds like oil-smoke slowly churning as if a thunderstorm were near, though the hinted-at rains never came. Lightning flashed occasionally, answered only after long minutes by deep muffled vibrations felt rather than heard. There was no light brighter than a candle, and that an unearthly green; my footsteps echoed but briefly in the deserted corridors that wove labrynthine about the fortress, and if I coughed the sound died instantly, as though smothered by the grim desolation which permeated the place like some insidious noxious vapour. Even the orc staff was mute. (At least, if they were capable of speech they chose not to exercise the capacity.) They moved like misshapen ghosts throughout the palely luminous halls, silent and unannounced as cockroaches on a carpeted floor. I would hear the slightest, most unassuming sound - a tiny rush of breath, perhaps, or the soft pad of a footstep, seeming as loud as the stifled thunder in this haunted stillness - and turn to see what it was (or whirl, more often than not, convinced at least subconsciously that whatever it was it must pose a threat to my life), and there would be this hideous, grey-skinned creature whose face appeared to have been doused in acid, or flattened with a shovel, or tossed into a meat-grinder. I would invariably shriek, and the orc would cast a disapproving glare in my direction before continuing with whatever he happened to be doing. I never ceased to be unnerved by them, but then again, I was, as mentioned before, so jittery by this time that it hardly made a difference. I spent my time aimlessly wandering, trying occasionally to engage the orcs in conversation (knowing it full well to be a pointless endeavour), staring out at the gloomy roiling black sky and wondering how long it would be before I turned into a wraith myself. Despair saturated my being to the very heart; time blended together seamless as the chill haze rising endlessly from the stream before the gate, and I fell into depression and listlessness.

My room was just down the hall from the Witch-King's armory, near the the Tower's apex, and gave an excellent view of the road to Gondor. One morning as I rose - reluctantly, for in sleep I found my sole relief - and shambled to the window, gazing out upon the bleak ash-grey mountains, the gleaming path I could never walk and the ghostly flowers gracing the vale in memory of what once dwelt here, I realised with a tiny jolt of something approaching joy that it was finally raining. More than a year I had been at Minas Morgul, and there had been nothing. But today - today it was raining.

Like a child in the first snow I raced outside - the roof was easily accessible, rather like a rail-less balcony - and standing in the downpour let myself be drenched through. I threw my head back, shivering, blinking against heavy raindrops, arms outstretched, and laughed aloud. The storm seemed to answer with cries of its own.

Wait. I looked up, confused, and peered through sheets of icy water to the road below, listening.

This time there was no mistake. I heard voices shouting and the clatter of hooves splashing at full gallop across broken paving-stones. The language was Westron. The riders were Men.


	5. The Mercy of Kings, Pt 1

I could not believe it. I couldn't. Then I went right to the edge and threw myself upon it, gazing breathless into the driving storm. My keen eyes were rewarded: rounding the crag at the turn of the road came a magnificent group of men on horseback, their armor glittering in the shadows like silver flashes of water in moonlight. I hardly dared breathe.

Then suddenly I was aware of the formless dread that came on me whenever the Witch-King was near. I turned sharply and at once leapt to my feet; he stood not two feet away, as full of malice as ever Sauron himself had been, though I could feel that his hostility was directed not at me but below. At once I knew what was about to happen, but as I opened my mouth to shout a warning the Witch-King seized my arm. The claws of his steel gauntlet dug into my flesh. "Do not interfere with my designs," he snarled, and wrenching my arm behind me he clamped a hand over my mouth.

We stood silently upon the edge, he holding me still and chuckling softly to himself; I watched in terror as the little force approached the gleaming bridge far below, unable to call out to them, to tell them that it was a trap they entered. And indeed, no sooner had the Men passed over the river than eight ear-shattering screeches heralded the arrival of the other Naz-gul, astride their winged serpents. Like fell eagles they plunged from the rumbling skies and swept down upon their prey, scattering the startled riders and tossing mount and mounted alike high into the air to be dashed to earth like porcelain thrown from a tower window. I heard panicked or pained cries from many of the ambushed men, but one voice rose clear and strong above them: a noble voice and full, commanding the knights to rally and follow him. At this sound the Witch-King gave a sharp hiss and dug his armoured nails yet deeper into me, and such a wave of distilled hatred burst out of him, aimed at this unseen figure, that I cringed like a beaten dog. In the vale beneath us the wraiths had herded the Men into a single group, as shepherds round up sheep or wolves their prey, and were driving them towards the wall, swooping now and then into the wheeling clutch of riders and men unhorsed, running frantic after their comrades, to cut down another brave warrior, haphazard and with no purpose but to destroy. Gondor's dead lay everywhere - surely more than half of the ambushed had been killed in the scant minutes since the battle (if it could be called such) had begun. The wraiths forced their quarry through the gates and out of our view, and the Witch-King gave a cruel laugh. "Come," he said, dragging me down the stairs to the main hall. "Come and meet our guests, little elf-maid. Let us see how King Earnur appreciates the hospitality of Minas Morgul." I let escape a quiet moan.

In the great hall, where once kings descendant of Numenor had held court, the few survivors had been disarmed and now stood back-to-back in a little knot, defenceless, surrounded by leering orcs and sneering wraiths. The Witch-King threw me to the ground, where I lay shivering as he advanced upon the group, sword drawn, and said, and his words were cold and malicious as snakes', "So at last you come to face me. Yet your valour seems finally to have outpaced your prowess, O lord of men." He cackled viciously and placed the tip of his blade at the throat of the man at the head of the group: greying and bearded, but hale and handsome in the Mannish way. Defiance showed in his proud grey eyes; he wore a bright winged crown upon his silver helm. This, I knew immediately, was King Earnur, Lord of Gondor. I stared in awe. He had not been king when I last heard of the affairs of the South, but his line was a worthy one - the men of Numenor were kin to the elves, and friends, and a high worthy people. This Earnur bore the mark of his forefathers, that same dignified grace that the Elvish blood endowed upon their stock - he stood erect, and there was no fear in his expression.

"You promised a duel, Angmar, yet it seems your cowardice has again outpaced your word," he replied evenly. "Will you not answer the challenge you yourself put forth? Y-"

"SILENCE!" spat the Witch-King, seething - the Gondorian ruler had apparently struck a nerve. "Do not try my patience! If a contest you desire, then a contest you shall have, but on _my_ terms - this is _my_ city now, _not _yours. And I am not the only one who spoke false. Your late escort was not welcome here. I merely repaid you in kind." He fell silent, pacing pantherlike before his prisoners. Most of them (the king an obvious exception) were beside themselves with terror. A few wept openly. I stared, numb, knowing I had to do something but not knowing what.

"Give your terms, then, and let us delay no further," pressed Earnur. The Witch-King whirled, furious, with an incoherent shrieking roar, and made as though he would strike the other's head from his body; he froze at the last instant, quivering with rage, his blade touching the man's throat but not close enough to draw blood. "I _warn_ you not to test my patience, fool," he snarled. "Next time you may not be so lucky!"

"Who is she?" the king asked, ignoring the wraith's threats. He was looking at me. I realised that I had screamed and leapt to my feet when the Witch-King struck, and so doing had called attention to myself.

The Witch-King made a low bestial sound in his throat and shot me a look of contempt. "She is of no consequence," he growled.

But Earnur persisted. "Why is an elf in Minas Morgul? Are you holding her prisoner?" There was a note of concern in his inquiry that I found touching - that he would be worried for my well-being when his own life stood in such extreme peril. I vowed then to do all I could to save him. I started to answer, but the Witch-King cut me off.

"Why must I continually repeat myself to you! She is of no consequence! Your own fate should be foremost in your mind - it is _your_ life which hangs in the balance, not hers."


	6. Duel

_**Note:** Dear me but it has been a long time. I apologise to anyone who cares - I'm working on a couple of other stories right now, and although I already know how this one goes, it's sort of difficult to piece the parts I have written together. Don't know how long it will be before the next chapter, but PLEASE PLEASE review or I may NEVER finish it! Please? Pretty please? ...Okay, I'll stop now._

Earnur did not respond for a long moment. He glanced at me, as if to reassure, and then addressed the lord of the Naz-gul once more.

"Your hesitation leads me to wonder if you do not fear defeat; for why else would you continue to stall our duel unless you believe that I will emerge the victor?"

The Witch-King turned on him in a fury, but soundlessly. His face - the nothingness where his face had once been - hovered mere inches from the Gondorian's; his foul breath ruffled the other's silvered hair, and all of Earnur's knights sank trembling to the ground under the paralysing influence of the wraith's power. But Earnur himself did not so much as flinch. He turned calmly to face the menace beside him and said softly, "Are you become too craven to honor even your own challenges, Angmar?"

The lord of Minas Morgul made a strange sound - something between a serpent's hiss and the guttering growl of a fumarole. Had the air itself frozen and dripped ice at the sound I would not have been amazed, so chill it was; one of the king's men moaned in terror, and the others quavered hopeless against each other and the stone floor; yet the steady grey eyes of Earnur, seed of Numenor, never left their adversary. It was a battle of wills that seemed to fill an eternity, but at last the Witch-King turned away in disgust. "What would you have, Gondor? Your life?"

"That, and those of my men, if I should prevail. Minas Ithil shall be returned to me and you and all your thains and brethren will leave this place and trouble my people never more. I would also have your fair guest left in my care," he added, his gaze firm upon mine.

The Witch-King sneered. "And if I win?"

"Then Minas Ithil shall be yours, and all the land east of Anduin, undisputed. And" - this with the tiniest sarcastic smile at the corner of his lips - "no one will ever dare to call you a coward again."

A quiet laugh. "As you will, Gondor."

I knew instantly at that cold mocking voice so pregnant with hatred and contempt that the Witch-King would not allow Earnur to live. Even if the man were to win their duel - which seemed unlikely, in a situation so hostile to his victory as this - the word of a servant of the Dark Lord bears no worth: the king would be killed ere he sheathed his sword. Yet I began to doubt that the contest, fair or not, would be permitted to occur at all; for so long as there existed even the tiniest risk of the Witch-King's loss, the wraith would seek another path. Even if the king and all witnesses to the tournament were killed, _he_ would know, and his pride was such that he would not be able to abide it, so greatly did the lord of the Naz-gul loathe his opponent.

I wanted to say something to Earnur then, to warn him (though surely he needed nothing so obvious told him), but could not open my mouth. I looked helplessly at him, and the lord of Gondor smiled at me - smiled! in that place! - as if to show me he knew the treachery that lay in store, and did not fear it. The wisdom of his race seemed to fill him like a golden light, noble and good. I might have wept to see someone so worthy brought to death by this beast, in another place - but here I could do nothing save watch in tingling dread.

And then the Witch-King whirled around and swept Earnur's head clean off.

I screamed and ran forward, but Angmar knocked me to the ground, where I lay sobbing like a widow.

"No one ever dares call me coward and lives," he said. He lifted the head and tossed it at my feet. "A gift, elf-maid, from me to you. Do not come between the Witch-King and his prey."


	7. The Mercy of Kings, Pt 2

_**To the reader:** I would like, in retrospect, to cut this chapter into two halves following the words, "if you can," but of course it's too late. So endure the long chapter. And anyhow, I wouldn't know what to call the two halves. Anyhow._

Thus commenced the darkest chapter of my life. The reader may ask whether the preceding century were not dark enough, but then at least - with Sauron, and at Minas Morgul - I had my sanity, if tainted by paranoia.

As the head bumped to a halt against my leg, I felt the green-filmed world reeling about me, and it seemed I heard the Witch-King laughing; but then I shook my head and the sound stopped. Instead there was silence, broken only by soft weeping - Earnur's men were mourning for him, and, I think, for themselves, for now there could be no hope of their escape. My wandering gaze found the slate-coloured eyes of one of their company, a young man, no older than thirty. He seemed to beg me to do something, and also, I in my newborn madness imagined, to blame me for the death of his king. Without registering the motion, I rose to my feet and turned to face the Witch-King, who paced before his prisoners, encouraging their terror while he decided how best to torment them.

"Lord, you have done your task - set these ones free."

Did those words truly cross my bloodless lips? I heard them spoken in my voice, but surely it could not have been I who willed them. Yet wherever so bold a plea germinated, its consequent existence was indisputable, as was its effect.

The Witch-King ceased pacing abruptly and very slowly turned. His eyes like unseen flame burned beneath his dark cowl, and all his malice focused now on me. "Have I not cautioned you against interruption? Have I not warned you to keep your pitiful affairs from my attention? I see it was not enough for you to see one Man killed - now must I destroy all these as well before I again have your silence? Very well, then, my thickheaded maiden, I shall again demonstrate to you your foolishness." Had I been clear of mind I might have heard the jeering note in his remark, but now as he drew his sword all I saw was the fate of King Earnur, played and played in a loop before my eyes. "No, my lord!" I cried, throwing myself down before him. "Let not the thoughtless words of a simple woman turn you to wrath! Only have mercy on these men who have done nothing but blindly follow the will of their master to a vain end - who have never wronged you, who even now cower at your feet in surrender! They will bring word of your power to their homes - they will spread your fame abroad, and all will fear you, lord - they can do naught but aid your cause in freedom, but if they die here who will tell of your victory? Do you not wish your deeds to be carried beyond this hall?"

I could tell even then that the Witch-King was amused at my behaviour. "What is this? Sudden abjection before your hated keeper? How characteristically female - what weak and manipulative creatures you are." He glanced at the stricken knights. "Very well then. Which one would you have released?"

"I would have you release them all, my lord," I replied uncertainly. But my eyes went immediately to the youngest of the group, the brown-haired man whose eyes I had met earlier.

The wraith gave a soft, malevolent laugh. "Do not test the extent of my charity, elf-maid. I will grant you one and one alone. Which would you have me set free?"

Silently I pointed. The Witch-King nodded as if satisfied.

"You," he said. The brown-haired man looked about wildly, startled, as though terrified that he should be chosen by the lord of the Naz-gul for anything - and why should he not be afraid? Clearly there must be some catch in this sudden show of clemency, some trap that led to horror and gruesome death that he nor I could perceive. But he was of the house of Earnur, and the king's quality ran also in his young blood, and so he overcame his fear and stood, straight and tall and noble, though his hands shook.

"Follow me," commanded the lord of Minas Morgul, and he led the man and I out to the porch of the city, to the arched stone gate, where we halted and stood looking out over the bridge and the ghostly field. The Witch-King turned to the slate-eyed Gondorian and indicated the winding road ahead. "The way to your home lies there," he said in a tone identical to that he had used with Earnur just before he slew him. "Run and escape, if you can."

The man frowned and looked to me in confusion. _Run!_ I mouthed urgently. And he did, like a shaft from a new bow; but the instant his feet passed over the stream the air rang with the screech of the Naz-gul, and two of them rose mounted and winged from the tower above us, to pursue him. The Witch-King chuckled at his servants' sport and gripped my arm to keep me from darting after their prey, but I in desperation broke away and shouted, "HIDE IN THE ROCKS! HIDE YOURSELF WHERE THEIR CLAWS CAN'T REACH!" He did not turn, but I knew the man had heard me. Yet the steeds of the wraiths were almost upon him, and so again I acted without thinking. I ran after him, my feet flying as swift as ever they had, and overtook him, for he was injured and laboring - I had not noticed til now. Yet fortunate this proved indeed, for now the Naz-gul wheeled and came after me: as a charge of the Dark Lord, my recovery was more imperative than the death of some nameless soldier.

What happened next remains hazy in my memory, but I suppose that I was hit from behind as one of the dragons attempted to snatch me up in its talons. The blow was not controlled, however, and the force too great, and I was hurled from the sill of the road into the vapour-wreathed valley below. The second wraith, still airborne, turned aside from his hunt to arrest my fall, but I tumbled into the river before the plummetting Naz-gul could catch me, and there my recollections turn blank and cold and are filled with whispering, as of homeless souls. When I awoke the fell waters were dripping from me into noisome fume, and my body felt numb and distant. The Witch-King stood over me among swirling shadows, a wrathful spirit with eyes like brands set in a black void. He siezed me by the throat and drew me up to the level of his gaze; my feet drooped a full twelve inches above the ground, but in the half-conscious aftereffects of that chill Lethean stream I scarcely felt its absence.

"Thou hast hindered me for the last time, elf-maid," he snarled, and dragging me back through the gate to the main hall where the remainder of Earnur's knights still huddled, continued, "Now wilt thou witness the consequences of thine ill-conceived actions." Even as I emerged from the lingering mist of the Morgul bourn the Witch-King cast me to the pavement before them; my eyes fell upon those of bodiless Earnur, now glazed and empty, as I pushed myself to my knees. The prisoners stared back at me in bewilderment and apprehension and despair - but I noticed with some small hope that the brown-haired man was not among them.


	8. The Madness of Vaj Thranduiliell

I would so gladly end this portion of my tale here, with this one triumph, and not speak of the deeds that followed, but then how would the reader understand my madness? And also if I left these events out of my account the reader would continue to wonder what became of the brave soldiers of the last king of Gondor, and perhaps imagine they died in slow torment in the belly of some dark tower. In that respect, at least, the reality of the matter is fairer than what opinions might arise from my silence.

I will not delude my audience into imagining the Witch-King dispatched the entire host of men that he might teach me the value of obedience, for it is true that three or four survived that bloody evening to vanish into the caverns of the Ephel Duath, where they likely perished after weeks or months in the care of wicked captors. The king's escort had not been many to begin with - perhaps thirty - at least half of whom never even entered the gate of Minas Morgul - most, by the compassion of the Valar, died during the swift massacre of Earnur's first assault or shortly thereafter. But the last few, those whose deaths remain as yet unexplained, those are the ones whose lives are on my soul forevermore.

There were six of them. I remember each face as though its owner stands before me, as clearly as I remember the faces of Earnur and his young slate-eyed companion (whom I to this day remain confident succeeded in escaping across the Anduin), and no amount of lives I might save will ever clear my conscience of their destruction. It is true that their ends would have been far worse had I not been involved, and this does offer some small consolation, but the fact remains that they were slain because of me, and only if I were callous and unfeeling or stupid would I feel myself without guilt in the matter.

One by one the Witch-King selected them from the group, dragged them out to where I had a clear view of them, shoved them to their knees, and cut their throats with his sword. Then before the warmth of life had faded from their bodies he decapitated them; the heads were set on savage pikes and stood about the chamber like trophies. As to the head of Earnur, when I saw what the lord of the Tower of Sorcery was about I instinctively snatched it up and sheltered it somewhat from the Witch-King's notice. Evidently this tactic proved effective, or else perhaps the master of the Naz-gul had no interest in gazing on the face of his hated enemy again, for when he had done and the last captives had been taken away sobbing like men condemned (as truly they were), I, dead of spirit and mind and emotion, was escorted back to my apartment without so much as a word or a look at my cradled package. My door closed and locked, and I crumpled to the ground, weeping uncontrollably, clutching the head of the fallen king to my breast like a stuffed toy or the living body of a loved one, and taking comfort in its presence as much as I would have those other things.

So it began. Such pain it causes me to speak of it now, and shame also, for these are not the sort of conditions one hears told of in songs and hero-stories - but if I am to tell my tale truthfully I must not omit the humiliating specifics.

That head became as dear to me as if it were Earnur himself, and I treated it as such, too. When I was in my room - which I was for several months following, as further punishment for my misbehaviour - I propped it up on a beautiful, if scarred, carven table which I was sure, like my bed, had been left over from the days of Minas Ithil and dragged out to furnish this place from some mound of kindling when the Witch-King heard he was to have me as his honored guest. I would sit on the bed facing the table and have long conversations with the king's head - I hardly noticed when it began to decompose, though this process left foul-smelling pools of sickly green ooze on that ancient tabletop; as the flesh disintegrated the bright helm slipped down over the eye sockets, and eventually even Earnur's ears dropped off.

I only offer these unsavory details to portray with no unclarity how far out of contact with reality I had drifted. I observed all these developments in my dear friend's appearance, but registered not one. It was no conscious choice on my part, but madness offered escape from a nightmare existence, and so when the opportunity presented itself, I embraced it. By the time the Witch-King allowed my door unlocked the Gondorian's head was all but a clean white skull, though some dry flesh lingered beneath the winged helm, and the cartilage of his nose still had not detached its bridge. Then I took the head wherever I went, not trusting it to be out of my protection for the barest instant. Many an hour did Earnur and I spend gazing out at the eerie, sickening beauty of the Morgul Vale, at the shrouded peaks of the Mountains of Shadow, at the tormented glow on the smog of Mordor. It became truly lovely in my twisted vision, and I appreciated it with the same joy, or some mockery thereof, as I would have the dawn mists over the hills of Mirkwood or the glory of the westering sun on the Misty Mountains or the light sparkling off a moss-banked forest river. I suppose it was beautiful, in a way, but only with the filter my insanity provided: for it allowed me to forget the bad things, the horrors that dwelt beneath that blood-coloured blush on the roiling clouds or the perverse sorcery that had created those pale white blossoms in the valley. Even as the place sank deeper into evil and unwholesomeness, as the spell upon it smothered every last trace of noble Gondor, I too was caught up in its hold, and by the time I left there I was become as silent as one of the Naz-gul, whispering only to my precious head and singing softly in the depths of the night.


	9. A Second Interlude

_**Note:** I know that nobody's reading this anymore, but... I dunno. There is a strange irresistibility to the site, something that keeps me posting even when my readers have deserted me... Just as well, though, because things get a little odd after this, which I think I mentioned, and when I told the story to my friend she laughed and said I'd killed her soul. So, I suppose you read at your own risk. But you should review anyhow. Or something. I'm done now._

I noticed a change in the Dead City's population during the century or more that I spent there - gradually the mute, shuffling orcs began to be joined - even replaced - by their raucous, sneering counterparts from neighbouring Mordor. At any given time there were only two dozens or so, but their small presence was strongly felt - and heard, and smelled, alas - in that green mausoleum. 'Living' orcs, I called them; the silent ones seemed walking corpses next to these their obnoxious, belligerent, foul-mouthed counterparts.

And now let me confess that I rejoiced at the Living orcs' arrival more than I would have at anything else save perhaps my freedom. The reader may stare aghast and incredulous at such words from the hand of a wood-elf, but surely he must by now understand at least a little my state of mind. You who have not lived five decades cannot so much as imagine what ten can do. After countless years of soundless lethargy and isolation, a bunch of loud, rowdy, bad-tempered uruks felt as welcome to me as a company of elves might have been.

The newcomers treated me with derision at first, but also something else, almost- almost like fear. I suppose I must have looked frightful in those days - I walked hunched, Earnur's helmed skull under one arm, glaring menacingly from under heavy lids, and my skin became pale and my eyes strange and cold - but surely that could not have worried my misshapen companions. I imagine some rumour of that which was still to come for me and had already been for Sauron, which kept me live and safe in these dark places, reached their tattered ears, and made them wary of the whisper-voiced elf-maid with the head of a long-dead king always at her side. They may also have been impressed when I spoke to them in a dialect of Black Speech, though it was not their own; they taught me theirs also, that we need not converse always in the Common Speech. I hesitate to say that I made friends of these creatures ('friend' does not translate into any Orcish language); but I will not say I did not take pleasure in their company, mean-spirited as it was.

Many incidents which occurred during that time might be found amusing to the more thick-skinned or morbidly-inclined individual, but as none bear direct pertinence to my narrative I will describe none of them here. Suffice it to say that I passed the years becoming better acquainted with unsavory folk, and doubtless I absorbed more than a few of their habits before the order came that I was at last to leave Minas Morgul.

Alas, I could take no delight in the announcement, for horrid as the Tower of Sorcery was, it at least sat on the edge of Sauron's realm - now I was to be relocated to its very heart. My ultimate destination lay beyond even Orodruin, across the ashen wastes in the far corner of the Black Land - the Sea of Nurnen, on the shores of which I would be put to use tending crops. I will admit surprise upon first hearing that anything grew in that fell country, but nonetheless orcs and goblins too must eat, and the food has to come from somewhere. The journey... was horrific, and seemed endless, but I shan't go in to that either. The unpleasant things of Mordor ought to remain there, as I see it, and recalling and writing the events at its borders has already too much shaken my resolve in setting down this chronicle. Telling of Earnur's valour, and of his men's, was a duty I could not shirk, but nothing between the twisted caverns through the Mountains of Shadow that we followed to Cirith Ungol and the ghastly fields on the shores of that endless fuming lake needs to be elaborated on. All that need be mentioned in any detail may be summed up in two words: I escaped.


	10. A Second Flight

_**Note: **Thanks to you three kind persons who restored my faith in this forum. We shall see how soon I might finish this confounded thing, for the school, it is demanding, and the work, and the sleep. But for your sakes I will try to update with some regularity._

Before I left Minas Morgul I had obtained a sack (though from where or whom I do not recall) in which to store Earnur's skull, lest my captors should see his winged crown and try to take it from me. I tied its edges into a loop that I might wear it like a sash or knapsack - and I did, every day that I toiled in the fields of Mordor. At some point one of the orc overseers became overly curious concerning my lumpy burden. I killed him with my hoe. I suppose this deed earned me the orcs' approval or greater acceptance to some degree, for after that incident they ceased to bother (which is to say torment and taunt) me as they had before, and though not exactly comfortable I at least went relatively unmolested throughout the remainder of my labours. The ease with which I accomplished a brutal killing of this sort, too, demonstrates exactly how much I had been changed. No longer did I shake and twitch like dry grass in a storm. Even the other prisoners feared me.

The orcs had by this time, I think, grown so used to me that they imagined I had not the sanity to go elsewhere, much less the will, and this I used to my advantage. From the instant I noticed my guards' complacency I began to seek a means of flight from the Land of Shadow with the single-minded determination of a fox in a trap.

When the sky was not hazed over with drifting ash from Orodruin or noxious mists risen from the waters of Nurnen I could see in the east a flat and featureless horizon; no shadowed jagged mountains cut the heavens there as in every other direction. Greasy tributaries snaked from the edges of the murky Sea towards the Ephel Duath to west and south and the Ered Lithui northwards, but also to the east - towards that break in my prison's wall. In what was either spring or autumn (I cannot say which, for all seasons look dry and dead in the realm of Sauron) these rivers ran high and fast, and in summer they ran dry - but somewhere in between they held enough water in their dark channels, mud-choked though it be, to hold a boat, and flowed slow enough that one might paddle against the current. My task, then, was to obtain a watercraft.

This turned out to be surprisingly easy. Patience and awareness led me to, of all things, a canoe, hidden under a tarpaulin and a mound of rusted tools and threadbare old grain-sacks. A wide paddle was wedged in its bottom. And so, on a sunny morning when most of the guards lay abed I dragged the boat to the waterside and set sail, rowing as swift as I might; the unburdened canoe skimmed the bubbling waves like a sea-bird, a fog rose, and by noon I was lost in it, heading east. When I reached the far shore I turned upriver, and when the river curved northwestward back towards Mordor I abandoned my vessel and began to walk. Not a single living thing did I encounter, and so the journey passed. Eventually the scrub and thorns and barren scoria underfoot gave way to dry grasses, and then those to living grasses, and then to wildflowers, and every day the mountains retreated behind me until nothing remained save a distant stain like oil on the western clouds. I never slowed. How could I be sure they were not following? What if a wraith were sent to retrieve me? I would not feel safe until the last suggestion of the Black Land had faded, and then I would turn north.


	11. Into the East

The barren rumpled plains I walked were called northern Khand, or perhaps Rhun's utmost south; but I knew nothing of them beyond that, and even that I didn't know for certain. The rolling hills turned from waving green and flower-specked to brown, the seeds scattered into air on feathery wings, and the sun began to angle north, as I did myself. Now, I will not say that I lack navigational ability - for always my mind's compass had led me sure in my home country - but no matter how I tried to alter my path more Mirkwood-ward I found myself ever turning east, and so passed out of any kind of familiar land towards the edge of the world.

I know what my readers will be thinking now: first, that the world is round, so how might I find its margin? or second, that the edge of the world lies west, across the sea in Valinor, or north beyond the Cape of Forochel, or third, that the world is encircled by an ocean, so the only way I might reach its end is by boat. Yet I would respond, hast thou any knowledge of the East? Has anyone? For I have never heard any trustworthy accounts of it that move beyond the Rhun, and I had passed out of that months hence. I will grant that a range of mountains, the Orocarni, was said to lie there in the Second Age, but I never encountered them, and I trust my own experience better than some long-dead poet's.

The grasses dried and withered and the weather went chill. Occasionally tiny snowflakes like clumps of sugar swirled down from the heavens, but they never coated the ground with more than a superficial lacquer; nothing hindered my footsteps, snow nor rain nor flora - and there were no fauna at all, save one bird - an eagle perhaps - that I saw one morning flying miles above as the sun rose over the curve of the world, a tiny speck moving across the grey-blue sky - nothing else. Though empty, however, these places were fair and pleasant enough walking - and of course after Mordor it might have been the Withered Heath I traversed and still would I have named it Paradise.


	12. The Silver Barrier

_**Dear readers, such as you are-** forgive me if I am long in updating, for the travail of my education has grown much. Which is to say, homework may keep me from writing, as well it ought, though whether I behave resposibly or not is yet to be seen... yeah, anyhow, write reviews. Be not needlessly kind!_

Spring had brought tender sprouts up between last year's rotting stems before the scenery changed. The vegetation dwindled (much to my displeasure) until only here and there did a tuft of grass or a prickly blossom poke from the red dirt, trying with limited success to prolong its stunted existence in an inhospitable landscape. After a day or two of this I noted something on the horizon (for this desert land also was flat as ever land has been) and approaching steadily discovered it to be a forest - but no forest such as one finds in Middle Earth proper. Like ruined columns of a giant's palace the trees loomed above, and here and there lay toppled, the very ground shattered beneath them by their fall. But every one, standing or otherwise, was dead, its tortured branches bare and its lifeless roots loosening themselves from the dusty earth. It must have been glorious when they lived - greater than mallorns in both height and girth they were, but the years had stripped their bark and carried away or disintegrated whatever leaves they might have worn, so I can only imagine what foliage once graced their boughs. Yet incredible as it might have been alone, the ghost forest was only the first wonder before me.

Beyond the trees was a canyon, thirty or forty feet deep, and on its bottom and far bank were buildings, or the skeletons of buildings: ancient and stripped of all but the framework, like the forest, slowly crumbling into nothing. In the desert things last an age that would vanish in a decade in a verdant clime like my own, and so I will not attempt to guess how long these places had lain abandoned, much less how long since they were first made - but certainly it was longer than anything else I had seen. These things put my two milennia to shame.

For a moment I thought there might not be a way across the canyon, but searching I found steps hewn into its walls - more skilfully, too, than even dwarves may manage, though the years had been unkind to them and undone some of the masons' craft. The ruined city also was a masterwork, but one I hardly have words to describe. Marshall had words for it - words like _rebar_ and _ferroconcrete_ - but I will do my best to explain it without them.

Almost as high, or higher, than the trees, rose massive towers - but not of stone, no - they were like the shells of burned houses, girders and joists and braces criss-crossed together against and up into the sky. The beams were of steel, or something like it; rust flakes dropped from them with every breeze like petals from wilting flowers. Near the buildings' bases these supports vanished into stone foundations; but the stone was not sound either - it too had rusted, and it broke apart at the touch. I could make head nor tail of it, nor could I guess what artifice might have driven those great beams into its heart so perfectly - for though the girders were peculiarly shaped in section, thus: **H**, instead of square or round, hardly a gap separated them from their friable footing. Other things, fabulous things which I cannot begin to describe without Marshall's vocabulary (and of him you will hear soon enough), were scattered in all directions - I gaped as I moved down the lanes between the ruins, wondering that I had not gone truly and spectacularly mad once and for all; but then I had passed beyond it and the visions were forgotten, for here I met with the last and greatest marvel of the three.

It stretched before me from one end of the horizon to the other, from the ground into the heavens beyond discernment, smooth and unbroken as a sheet of glass, opaque, reflecting back the decaying metropolis and the canyon and the forest and the endless expanse of the Rhun so flawlessly I might have walked into it had it not been for my own image in the mirror.

Now, here I ask you allow me a small digression, for I had not seen myself since... well, since I left my home for the last time - and had I not known my ragged clothes I would scarce have recognised myself. I looked like a wild creature risen from the dust. The red soil, carried on the ceaseless wind, had tinted my hair and skin and garb a rusty brown; my hair, too, had grown past my waist and knotted itself into a undifferentiated mat, and my clothes were in tatters. I was almost surprised to see the matched short swords which I in my youth had christened Fire and Ice still at my sides, and the threadbare sack containing Earnur's skull still slung across my shoulders like a baldric. But these were secondary - my face had changed, and my body. Everything superfluous had been seared away, leaving only sinew and bone and taut muscle; my skin was tough and tanned as leather and my features sharp and unfamiliar. I stared at the reflection a long, long time. And then I looked to the barrier.

Slowly, uncertainly, I touched it. It was cold, clammy, tingling as though shot through with electricity; ripples darted out from my finger, and like a viscous liquid the silver clung to it when I withdrew my hand.

Now came a choice. I must either turn back, retracing all my steps til this point, and hope that whatever force had pulled me hither would release me west; or else I must go through the barrier to whatever lay on the other side. If there was another side.

I decided I preferred the known emptiness to the unknown. To the Rhun, then - let the last year be called wasted, I would not risk my life for curiosity. But when I turned to go, I could not - the silver wall drew me like a magnet draws iron. It seemed the choice had been made for me.

I would go through the mirror.


	13. The Other Side

I considered whether I ought to take a running start, but after striking the glass proved it met force with force, decided against. Then I hesitated, sitting contemplating the view and the mirror alternately until the sun had sunk in the west and the stars winked into life and I realised that if I didn't build up my courage with some celerity I'd end up sitting here forever, my bones to join the city and the trees in their decomposition - which would be just as well as if instead I drowned in the midst of the silver barrier. So, though still utterly reluctant, I stood, stared at myself in the mirror a moment longer, and then pressed my hands into it, palm out. The quicksilver gave way, rippling crazily, and closed over my wrists like liquid steel, frigid and electric and confining. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and plunged in.

It was an awful, eerie feeling, being in there. The tingling current sent my skin crawling, the cold was penetrating and close and the pressure on all sides made me feel I was being crushed. Yet I walked forward, my eyes squinched tight against the encroaching metal, as quickly as I might - the stuff was viscous like sap or honey and resisted my passage. Just when I was certain I would suffocate, my hand broke into air, and before I hardly realised it I had tumbled out onto the ground, as though the barrier spit me out of itself in sudden revulsion. I lay still for a moment, feeling the sun coax warmth back into me... Wait, had the sun not set only minutes earlier? I opened my eyes in surprise, sat up and looked around.

The infinite mirror loomed over me as before, its surface still slightly disturbed by my passage, but here rather than dark and star-speckled the sky was bright with a new dawn in the east. Mountains or hills, snowless, bordered the horizon, and something glinted in the distance at their toe, or possibly closer. I struggled to my feet and began to walk towards the source of the flash. As the sun moved it glanced off other things - they seemed clustered maybe fifteen kilometres (or three leagues, as you will) away, shining like great glass windows or long copper roofs each in their turn or several at once. I wasn't sure what I expected - a village, maybe - but the reality was as odd as anything I'd yet seen save the silver barrier, which remains unparalleled amongst the unbelievable in my memory.

As I neared the place, the sun crossing above me in the opposite direction, it became obvious the structures I approached were not buildings - at least, not buildings of the sort that offer protection from the elements. They were like platforms with polished black roofs tilted towards the sun, miles and miles of them, lined up neatly like rows of crops in a field. Marshall told me - patience, reader, he isn't long in arriving now - that they caught the light and warmth that touched them and stored it for later use, just as a rain-barrel catches and stores water; the panels followed the sun across the heavens each day that they might snatch up as many of its rays as possible. I watched them do the latter - and heard as well, for the gears of the mechanism that tilted their tops made a soft creaking whirr like waggon wheels - as I passed under their banded shadows... still moving east, if only out of habit.

I spotted the man somewhere deep in this humming forest as the shades lengthened and the air chilled. I would not have noticed him had he not been singing to himself: a strange song in a strange language. In the near-silence I had been deaf to have missed it. I froze at the sound and looked about wildly for its source.

He poked at a tangle of wire spurting from a hole in one of the sun-collecters' supports, his back to me, a box of tools by his side. Cautiously I approached. I was wary - his song didn't seem hostile, but that meant nothing: even orcs sing. And then suddenly he turned.

What followed I leave to him to explain.


	14. Civilisation, Pt 1

_((NOTE: I have tried to find time, but the time will not be found. So, yeah, it's sort of half a chapter instead of a full one, but... well, anyhow. This is a hard bit to write. Shut up! Yes it is! ...Also thanks to whoever it was for the Entwives idea...))_

Each morning Marshall Dillon took his hover-scooter from his run-down second-story flat in Yasnai out to the solar panels to do maintenance. He visited the fields in rotation - just as he completed checking up on the final area in his queue, the first on the list would be ready for his attentions again. It was a boring job, but it paid well, and he wasn't about to complain. He was twenty-three; he'd worked on solar collectors since high school. In the thousands of hours he'd logged in the desert, Marshall had seen a lot of odd things - dust storms that descended from a clear sky and moaned with human voices; patches of trees that migrated from one end of the horizon to the other over the course of a single month; a random wandering elephant, half-starved and piteous, that smashed three panels before it ran bellowing into the distance; phantom mountains shimmering in the far west - but never anything quite so inexplainable as this.

He had been realigning a gear, humming a folk song, minding his own business - and then suddenly he felt the hair raise on his neck, as though he were being watched; he turned around, and there was - well, he couldn't quite tell in the long light, and the figure was half-hidden behind a panel support - but he thought it was a girl.

"Hello," he said in astonishment. "Can- can I help you?"

She stared at him blankly and didn't move. Marshall was reminded of a movie he saw once in which scientists brought prehistoric humans into the future - or maybe they travelled back in time, he couldn't remember which - but at some point the scientists in the movie used a butane lighter to start a fire. Slowly out from behind trees and rocks crawled awed cavemen, gaping and jittery, curious but uncertain. This person (certainly grimy and disheveled enough to be one of the movie's ancient hominids) was behaving very much like that. He wondered if this situation weren't something similar.

"Hey," he said, "you wanna come over here? I won't bite; I promise." He moved a step closer, holding out his hand as he would to a frightened animal to show his trustworthiness - never mind that he was holding a spanner, it couldn't look all that menacing. She frowned, said something in an Arabic-sounding language, and backed up a step. Marshall sighed. "You want me to just leave you alone? I have food," he added, rummaging in his pocket for the half of a candy bar stored there. After a brief search, watched by his guest with quizzical suspicion, he produced a melty Reeses peanut butter cup, broke off a small chunk and put it in his mouth to show its safety, then held the remainder out to her. The strange girl seemed to realise then that he was not an enemy; she accepted the proferred Reeses and upon examining it for almost a minute took a small bite. Immediately her face lit up; she began babbling in that peculiar language (on second thought, maybe it was African - Swahili or something... or maybe Scandanavian - not like the panel repairman knew anything about languages), finished the candy, and then drew a little pictorial map in the sand with her finger, pointing at it emphatically and babbling some more.

Marshall shook his head, baffled. "I'm sorry, kiddo, but I can't understand a word you're saying. Look, it's getting dark; why don't you come back to my place and we can get you cleaned up?" He managed to convey this proposition to the girl - heaven knows _how_ - and to coax her onto the scooter; though clearly wary, once they began to move she seemed surprisingly unafraid. Cool night air rushed past them - twilight was really the _only_ cool time in Yasnai - the flickering fluorescents of the city grew near, and within the hour they were at the discoloured door of his apartment. "Welcome home," Marshall announced, waving his arm to indicate the seedy neighborhood with its potholed cement, drifting newspaper, burglar bars on the windows, drug dealers in the alleyways. Somewhere a stereo or a television set was blaring; a dog barked and a couple was screaming at each other in a house down the way. But when he glanced at his visitor, it was clear she saw not a trashy ghetto but some kind of mystical fairyland - she was looking around with the unbelieving awe and big saucer eyes of a child on a snowy morning, like one seeing something incredible for the first and only time. "Mani... Sina yamen... ai, Yavanna!" she murmured while Marshall dug through his pockets for the key. After he got the door unlocked he had to call her three times and tap her on the shoulder twice before she saw and followed him inside. One would think his brown shagg carpetting woven from gold from the way she stared at it. It was kind of flattering, actually.


	15. Civilisation, Pt 2

_**((I'm sorry, I'm sorry it's been so long! I also literally just finished writing this chapter and it's not as good as the others, but I felt so bad and got worried I'd lose my audience forever, so I wrote it up as quick as I could - which is to say, in a week - and here it is and PLEASE don't have given up on me, please? I'm just very busy... very, very busy...))**_

There is so much to tell of my time with Marshall - but I know not how or what to tell of it. What wonders I beheld! None so awesome as the dead forest or the skeleton city or the silver barrier, to be sure, but little things of the sort that produce delighted gasps upon witness, enchanting enchanted things. The adjustable-temperature shower, for instance, which Marshall somehow managed to communicate to me how to use (recall my described appearance - the man likely wished to discover whether he had acquired a human guest or a very dirty animal). He coaxed me into a white tiled room - a bit plain, perhaps, but marvelous in my estimation - and turned the water on and off several times in demonstration; then, after illustrating his exotic (to my mind, at any rate) soap varieties as well, he handed me a pair of fraying towels and a set of his own clothes and left.

I spent fully two hours washing the caked grime from my body and a third attempting to wash my hair. When it at last became clear that my dreadlocks would not be unknotted, I found a pair of shears and cropped my hair almost to the scalp - it would grow anew. I attempted to clean my clothes as well, but they fell apart in the bathtub, leaving me no choice but to wear the garments Marshall had lent. They were peculiar to me then - not so much now. Indeed, the better portion of Marshall's lifestyle had become almost commonplace for me by the time I left.

I spent eighteen years with him - eighteen years that held more for me than the preceding unmeasured hundreds. Oh, the amazements I could speak of - but most can scarce be comprehended without being seen, and any effort on my part to describe these would certainly end in confusion. Furthermore, it is not my intent to write a litany of strange things I've seen or experienced for those who will never have the chance, as travellers' tales do - and at any rate if I were to attempt to catalogue every marvel of Marshall's world the resulting book would require a forest's worth of parchment, which I haven't at my disposal. One wonder alone will I speak of, and that only to provide a reason for why I left. Yet I run ahead of myself - first let me speak of Marshall and his world - the kindness he shewed healed me and his hospitality made me human again.

Marshall Dillon - he bore two names, as the halflings do - was, as far as I am aware, a Man: he shaved his face each morning, marvelled at my pointed ears, and drank copious amounts of alcohol at the end of each week, which made him raucous and easy to amuse; he had a lopsided grin that he gave frequently, said he watched too much television (if I tried to explain it you would not believe), and wore trousers with holes in the knees. When I stepped out of the lavatory that first night with no hair, smelling of "Ivory" soap, wearing his overloose clothing, he seemed to start. For several seconds he stared, mouth agape - I imagine he had expected an animal guest after all. Then he noticed that in the towel I carefully cradled was nestled a bleached human skull firm in a tarnished helm. I had intended to ask, through signs, if he had anything in which I might carry it, but his reaction was so negative (as can be easily imagined) that I began to reconsider. At that time I did not know the language, so Marshall's alarmed words seemed no more than excited gibberish, but when he advanced on me, gesticulating frantically at Earnur's head, instinctively I cowered back, hugging the skull closer against any attempt to take it. After he realised his diatribe was not having its intended effect the man calmed down, though he seemed wary of me for some time afterward. An arduous conversation conducted almost entirely with gestures resulted in Earnur's relocation to an old blue satchel made of a foreign fabric, which I wore everywhere, as I had the Mordorran sack. When finally I'd acquired a vocabulary large enough to explain, I told Marshall why I carried the skull, but it didn't seem to make him any easier with the idea.

I began to pick up the language almost at once, but it was several months before I could conduct anything that might pass for conversation and a year at least before those conversations acquired any measure of depth. Then the learning process became easier, and my host and I held many a long discussion on the tar-papered roof of his apartment, looking up at the bright desert stars and sipping his favourite alcohol, "Crown". Marshall was lonely; he had numerous acquaintances, but few real friends. In me, he said, he had at last found someone who understood him - a "soul-mate" he called it. Yet despite this confession, there was something in him, I think, that feared me. He often asked me to tell stories of my life (particularly after a glass or two of Crown), and would listen attentively, curious, intrigued at a world completely set apart from his own - but sometimes after them he became subdued and uncomfortable and would go to bed early, though he never stopped requesting I tell them. I held back nothing. Marshall was someone I felt I could trust; relating my traumas to him helped relieve the pressure the experiences had built up inside me over centuries of silence. He healed me.

By my departure I claimed fluency in his language.

In retrospect I wonder whether Marshall was not in love with me. He was a quiet man, and I naive in matters of romance then, but looking back I believe, from the way he behaved, that Marshall Dillon felt much more for me than I realised at the time. I often regret I was not more sensitive... yet perhaps it is for the better that I led him not into false hope - for as the reader knows, I could not stay with him forever.


	16. Marshall's Plan

_((Well. So I said I would finish this, and by golly, I am going to. I waited to update until I had at least two chapter already done so it's not a big let-down, and I am going to do my dangdest to write a whole bunch on this, so if you still exist... please don't desert me... like I deserted you... Anyhow.))_

I announced to Marshall that I intended to leave. He was distraught. He wanted to know why, and I told him that a strange feeling had come over me quite rapidly - a premonition, I suppose, though not exactly, for I felt that whatever ill begot my urgency was already at hand. I could not have known the cause of my foreboding beyond the vaguest impressions, and indeed am still sometimes uncertain as to what caused it, but I knew beyond equivocation that I must leave. Marshall sat by me on his battered floral-print sofa, listening in silence as I described my purpose, my motivation, my means of return. I would walk home, just as I had come (though I was uncertain whether the strange magnetism that originally drove me here might not prevent my leaving). I would need some things - a weapon, for an example, lest I encounter orcs in my course.

My host heeded the plan attentively; when I completed my monologue he announced that he had a better idea.

"You're certain that you won't reconsider?" he asked as we sped between wavering lines of heat and dust, the dry wind rushing against our faces. Marshall's so-called "hover-scooter" thrummed beneath our shoes, skimming the desert pavement like a seabird; I clasped his shoulders for stability.

"Marshall," I told him kindly, "you know how dearly loth I am to go, but my heart will not let me rest until I am home. There's no reconsideration to make."

We slowed before a hot tar-scented plaza, black with linear yellow and white patterns of reflective lacquer painted across it and encircled by a wide-woven coarse wire fence of a sort Marshall's world contained to ubiquity. Opposite the fence a vast expanse of asphalt shimmered and bubbled in the heat. Marshall indicated a clutch of buildings at its far margin, before which a mismatched group of rusting mechanica huddled, and asked, "Do you know what those are?"

I gazed upon those distant machines, keen eyes tracing their sloping steel lines, the flattened bolts that ran scar-like along each seam, the gleaming geometric appendages swept back like fishes' fins into smooth, featherless wings. Yes, I knew what they were. "Airplanes," I said.

Marshall nodded. "You're not going to walk back to your home," he said. "You're going to fly."


	17. A Third Flight

I cannot presume my reader to have reached unaided that connection which Marshall intended, and which I, having lived in his world several years, understood immediately. This 'airplane', you see, is that final incomprehensible wonder I previously promised to describe: a device capable of lofting a human above the earth, just as the Witch-King's monster had done many centuries earlier, but purely through the artifice of man - no living creature was indentured to the task, only steel plates and glass and wheels and innumerable tiny controls, all of which I was soon to learn. Given sufficient petroleum and a skilled pilot, the mechanical beast could travel at speeds besting anything a person of Arda might conceive in their most implausible of dreams and at heights rivalling the birds themselves. This was how Marshall Dillon intended I return home, and knowing the trouble it would save, I readily agreed.

Mastering the airplanes' myriad control systems took patience, but surprisingly little time. Marshall himself did not know the plane's secrets; he enlisted a school friend, rather, who worked maintenance on the vehicles and was willing to teach me. Within the year I had taken eight practice flights, and Marshall's friend had pronounced me capable of piloting an airjet unassisted. The news brought melancholy with the joy of accomplishment - for now there remained nothing to keep me here. My kind, dear host and I spent a final evening atop his apartment, speaking of endings and afterlives, and when the sun rose we went to the airfield.

As I mounted the jet and slipped into the small form-fitting chair from where it might be controlled, I turned back and bid the man Marshall Dillon a final farewell. Then his school friend snapped shut the glass lid of my hollow and took away the ladder I had used to reach it and directed me with his hands towards the long black-paved track from which the plane was to be launched, and my unlikely savior was lost to view behind me. It would be the last I saw of him.

At my late instructor's signal I started the bellowing engines and began to move, the plane running smooth along the asphalt, faster and faster, until the desert outside was become a racing blur. Like an eager stallion the mechanical beast bucked and jumped, hasty to escape the earth - I eased the controls back, angling the nose end of my vehicle upwards, and all at once, like an arrow from a new bow, the ground snapped loose and we were free, soaring higher and higher into the electric blue heavens, the sand and buildings falling away behind us as swiftly as if we had dropped them. The small, sleek-lined plane rose true and even, exactly as it had done when we practiced. I spiralled up to almost two miles altitude, turned to the west, and sped up. A second or two and I could see the mercury barrier rippling softly silver ahead - I would hit it head-on. Faster still I drove my mount, til its snarling engine could give no more speed, and my own jet, mirrored, hurtled back at me. Our noses collided - enveloped - warped - time seemed suddenly slowed to a near halt - the mirror bent and curved around the leading surface of the plane, supple as quicksilver, resistant as glass - all of the barrier's will and strength strove to keep us back, and yet it had to give, and so time slackened, and would have stopped altogether if it could have, I imagine. But the force of my impact was too great. A crash and a shatterering and the sudden incredible roar of the engines like thunder and I was through, spinning wildly, screaming, feeble hands struggling against rebellious controls gravity already commanded. We were going to crash. Outside my glass bubble came flashes of sky, ground, sky, ground, spires of the abandoned city spiralling like fireworks up at me, and then a shriek like rending metal and showers of silver and flame brought night upon my eyes. No more.


	18. Enter Morgoth

When I woke I lay in a forest. Absent the dusty plateau, the jutting rebar, the wreckage of my plane I ought to have broken upon - in their place bright liquid sunlight, gently dancing trees, flowers, birdsong, a babbling brook... I was certain I had died in the collision and come to the fair green country beyond. But perhaps not. I heard footsteps approaching.

Hastily I rose, uncertain as to what manner of phantom I ought to anticipate. I did note, as I scrambled up, that I still wore the tight blue trousers and cotton shirt Marshall had purchased for me in Yasnai and carried the canvas satchel inside which Earnur's head had almost two decades now resided. Nothing in my attire had changed - no trace showed even of the fiery death my airplane had doubtless suffered, and which I hitherto had assumed myself a participant in. Evidently whatever inexplicably transported me hence had done so prior to that final collision.

Quickly I hid myself in a nearby shrubbery, lest the newcomer prove hostile. From my leafy vantage I watched a disheveled young man with blond hair bound into a single strand at the neck emerge from the woods and crouch by the brook. He filled a small leather flask from the sparkling waters, then cupped his hands into the current and drank. His ears betrayed him for an elf, and the instant that my already-reeling mind registered as much I burst from the bushes with a joyous, "May the Valar smile upon every path you walk, happy sir! Tell, what land is this? How dearly have I desired this moment-"

His reaction was nothing I had expected. He dropped his canteen, leapt to his feet, whirling - and I saw then that he was armed, one raw-knuckled, three-fingered hand clutching a rusted orc-blade. Yet more distressing was his visage, for the wretched creature's face had been horribly disfigured. One eye-socket gaped torn and empty; his tongue was missing; his nostrils were slit and his lips shredded like tattered sailcloth. I stopped speaking mid-sentence in absolute horror, staggering ungracefully back. "Merciful Yavanna..." I gasped when my powers of speech at last returned. "Who has done this to you? What manner of- what- Oh, beloved Ulmo..."

When the man, seeing me, decided I was neither threat nor enemy he gave a gurgling sigh and motioned me closer. Delicately he bent to a sandy streamside stretch, and with one finger he wrote in archaic script in the bare earth a single word: "Morgoth."

A feeling akin to snow slipping down my bare spine overtook me, and in cataplexic shock I sat down heavily on the grassy sward. Morgoth! Could it be...? Desperately I strove to think. Could I have... when I struck the silver barrier... could somehow I have been cast backwards through time? It seemed impossible... but after all I had by now witnessed, 'impossible' began more and more to seem a probabalistic definition - more prognostication than solid pronouncement. Yet unwilling to accept this new development, I searched out the man's single clear blue eye. "You escaped from him?" I asked in a voice hardly greater than a whisper.

Solemnly he nodded.

"Where have you to go?"

"Gondolin," he wrote in the sand.

In my stomach I felt a sickening chill. The city Gondolin had been destroyed five thousand years ere my parents ever conceived me. I am certain that the realisation of where - or rather when - I had come to showed in my expression, for the man frowned and touched my arm - as if to inquire why the name of so glorious and protected a place should cause a person such anxiety. I lifted my gaze to his and with a steadying gulp of a breath asked, "May I go with you?"

Again he nodded, kindly - as though I should be deserving of his sympathies, rather than he of mine - and took my hand in his own. Rough scabs I felt on his palm, and the absence of fingers and flesh, but I grasped it as close as I would have Marshall's hand, or that of a family member. Never had the world seemed so foreign and uncertain; this mutilated stranger felt strong and safe, like an anchor to reality. I smiled at him with affection and undisguised gratitude. "Thank you," I murmured. "I daren't guess what I should have done if you hadn't arrived."


	19. Gondolin

_((Note: No one is writing reviews, so I begin to doubt this is actually being read, and so I continue to post in hopes that the story isn't so weird that I've driven away whatever readers I might have had, as if the year-long hiatus wasn't enough to banish them. Oh well.))_

We walked for a long time, hastily and warily. My companion was nervous. He kept sending me perplexed glances, for my attire and even my hairstyle were of foreign aspect and must have been marvelous to his eye. But my ears could not deceive him, and though I spoke a modern version of his tongue, nonetheless it was his. Therefore he made no attempt to inquire as to whence I had come, and silently the two of us cut across shadowy woodlands. Day faded to night, night moved into day, but he did not slow. About a week we travelled, perhaps longer. Gradually before us in fleet glimpses rose a clutch of mist-capped peaks, near arm of a larger mountain range far in the distance. Near we drew to its feet, and then at last by twilight came to a place on a hill in view of a great and shining river. _Sirion?_, I wondered, gazing down upon the silver ribbon as the young sun's pale rays flashed in its fading. My guide took my hand in his and led me in among dark hills, winding amongst ravines and tumbled rocks until sun and river seemed a memory, and then when I concluded in grave distress that we had utterly lost our way, suddenly there appeared a short passage and then a gate, at which my companion knocked softly.

"Who is that?" said a voice, startlingly close.

"Two of your kin who seek asylum," I replied, knowing my friend could not answer for us.

The gate swung soundlessly open. "Enter," said the voice.

We did - I uneasily, he as though a heavy burden had risen from his shoulders. Unseen hands ushered us into a small antechamber, just off the hewn corridor, where a door shut and a lone candle flicked into brilliance on a table before us. The room was small, the walls of dark stone smoothed to gravelly evenness, and many chairs were strewn about, sitting alone or stacked near the walls beside a bookcase bearing food. A grim man of handsome features - elvish, like ourselves - examined us from across the table. Upon me his gaze was hard and hostile, but when he laid eyes on my companion the sentry's look turned to horror and awe. "Celegon?" he murmured. "My friend - by the powers of the Valar - I did not think ever to see you living!" He went swiftly and took the other's deformed hands in his own. "You have been through torment," he said, his distress apparent. Celegon nodded solemnly, and it was then that his friend understood that the other could not talk. Then he turned to me.

"I am Glinellach," he said. "I do not know you, but the one with whom you travel has been dear to me since our youth. Perhaps you may explain how he was so brutally marred?" He watched with wary, hopeful eyes, and I was loth to disappoint him.

"My lord Glinellach," I replied with regret, "I am Vajralis of the Woodland Realm, and I am sorry to report that I know as little of my lord Celegon's injuries as yourself. We met but a week's time before this day, as he bent to drink, a fugitive in some forest to the north, and I, lost and alone, begged he guide me to this place. My tale is strange, nay, incredible, and I will not begrudge you should you call me a spy, though I swear by Yavanna and all her creation that I am not."

The guard captain raised an eyebrow, his suspicion undisguised. "Sit," he commanded, and when all present had taken chairs from the sizable collection he bade me speak. I did. I told my saga as truthfully as I might, and when I had done the fellow stared at me in blatant disbelief. "You expect me to accept that you have flown back through time in a magical bird-machine and that you know of this place from your childhood songs and history lessons?" he asked derisively. "Dost thou imagine me a fool? Miss Vajralis, I am wont to believe your ability to distinguish your dreams from reality has been lost."

I nodded penitently, silent. I had known such a reaction must follow my fabulous story - indeed, on occasion I hardly believed it myself.

"Have you any proof of your honesty?" the man said.

"I have only the clothes I wear," I replied quietly, "and this - the head of Earnur, king of Gondor, most valiant of Men and honorable." Gently I took the satchel from my back, opened it and drew out the clean white skull of the King, still bearing his tarnished helm.

Glinellach stared at me in amazement, but I realised momentarily that it was not the noble Earnur which most impressed him - it was the fastening on my satchel, which Marshall had named a zipper, and which could be done and undone by moving a small metal tab along a toothed track. "May I touch it?" he asked uncertainly.

"Of course," I said, and he reached for the bag. Like a wondering child he zipped and unzipped it, rubbing the synthetic canvas' peculiar texture between two fingers.

"You _are_ oddly dressed," he admitted.

And so it came about that I, Vaj Thranduiliell, was granted entry to the city of Gondolin - dwelling of heroes, place of legends - five thousand years before ever I was born.


	20. Turgon

_**((Shocker of shockers! I'm still alive! I'm still writing this story, even though it's been over a year and no one seems to be reading anything past "The Silver Barrier". If you happen to still be reading this, you could make this writer inordinately happy by telling me what you think of the weird bits, or even just saying "Hi"... I'm really sorry I'm not writing faster - I'm a big lazy flake, I know! Please don't let that turn you away!))**_

We arrived as the sun was breaking. Few sights have I beheld so glorious as that, before or since. It was as though the light had been distilled, like alcohol, and poured out like a libation into this bowl between the hills; and from the center of this rose a glittering, brilliant spire of crystal and gold - the city Gondolin, more incredible to behold than ever song recalled. I was as one deaf and dumb, paralysed by its beauty, and the pair of precautionary guards assigned to accompany us to the king laughed - not unkindly - as they moved past. Celegon pressed a gentle hand to my shoulder; I glanced up at him to see tears glistening in his good eye. Before we left, Glinellach the guard captain had questioned us both at length, and I learned that my travel companion had been in Morgoth's Iron Hell for almost thirty years. His joy at returning must have been indescribable. I took his hand. I had not words to convey how happy I was for him, so I didn't bother attempting to - my grip in his conveyed my feelings well enough. Together we walked across the farm-patchworked sward, hand in hand, and ascended the sparkling white stairs to the city.

Our object was the royal palace, where King Turgon himself was waiting to rule definitively on our freedom; whether we might remain in the city had been decided as soon as Glinellach apprehended us. All caution must be maintained. Ever since the betrayal of Eol and the death of Aredhel, the guards had explained, outsiders - and even returning citizens - were looked upon with mistrust. The king would judge our character and determine if we must live out our days in confinement, or be allowed range of the city unescorted. I admit I felt my prospects uninspiring. Not that I imagined Lord Turgon should find my moral calibre lacking; rather, I suspected it would be my sanity the king would dispute directly he examined me. I prayed that Celegon at least might keep his independence, for indeed if ever a man deserved to live under his own will, he I knew had earned that right.

Yet Turgon's wisdom had been remembered to me as a child, and so a hope persisted in me that my companion and I should both be granted unconditional movement within the valley - for if anyone could see the truth in my tale, surely a son of Fingolfin must.

Nervously I waited in the courtyard of the palace, agitated at the thought of imprisonment after all these years. By the time a young herald arrived announcing the king's presence, I had resumed that fitful, fearful shaking I'd once thought abandoned forever. Twitching, I rose. Shivering, I bowed low, not daring to meet King Turgon's eyes. The corner of a silver-blue robe moved into the frame of my vision, and the pale toe of a kid-leather boot.

"You are Vajralis of the Woodland Realm?" he asked.

Shuddering, I nodded.

"Rise," he said.

We spoke for many long hours. Celegon, he told me, he had already interviewed and seen fit to leave free; the man had long been a trusted soldier, and the king doubted not he should remain so. I, however, presented a greater quandary. With the last strongholds of the Noldor many years destroyed, he wondered how I could have come from anywhere but Morgoth's palace, and, as I showed no signs of torment, he was rightfully suspicious. I told him in full earnestness my tale. I showed him the canvas satchel and its zipper, Earnur's time-bleached head, the garish reflective "sneaker" shoes Marshall had given me in Yasnai, the ancient Gondolin blades I had carried since ere I first was captured and had somehow brought safe through Mordor and beyond. The zipper did not impress him, nor the skull, nor my shoes' rubber soles; but upon seeing the swords the king grew solemn and asked where I had got them from.

"My father gave them to me," I told him.

"I feel you speak true," he said, his face serious and old and terrible. "Have your liberty, then, Vajralis of Greenwood. Yet I do humbly ask one favour."

"Anything, my lord." I was too awed at the sudden fire of wisdom and regalness that wreathed his features to dare inquire first what he wished. Then he laughed a bit, his grey-blue eyes turned sad, and smiled. "I think that you may reconsider once you have heard my request, young miss, but I give you the right to refuse. I would have you grant me these swords you carry."

I glanced at the blades, bewildered. A pair of swords not much longer than knives, bright but battered - these were to ransom me? Gondolin blades they were, oh yes, but poor and mean ones in comparison with those I now saw girding every man I passed. Even the pale goblin-light that should have warned me of many a danger had never graced their steel. Defective, my father had told me in my youth. And much use they'd served _me_, who proved too craven to strike a blow against even my weakest captors! In bemusement I held them towards the king. "Take them, sir," said I. "They are yours. I only ask, in curiosity, if my lord might tell why he places such value in these simple knives?"

He smiled - a kindly, grandfatherly smile - and said, "Pure sentiment, my young elf-maid. They were mine once, then lost - given me in my childhood that I might learn the art of war. They remember me a happier time, ere Morgoth cloaked this world in shadow and the Kinslayer spake his cursed oath. You, child, who have known nothing but this veiled earth - you cannot understand how sweetly your generosity touches me."


End file.
